Sysadmin ignores 25 THOUSAND patches, among other sins

Scorched earth IT

Things got worse: Bill also found that the call system's default passwords had been changed, historical call reporting had been switched off and call management software erased.

“This meant that every day I needed to be the last one out to run the call stats. Every working sodding day!”

The VoIP provider was no help, as Bill found “they could not find the old default master/config passwords for the device and they couldn't manage it remotely as the idiot has also nobbled that firewall rule as well”.

Back-up was badly implemented so it wasn't deleting log files, which meant the Exchange box was full. So was a filer that, for no apparent reason, stored a copy of the ancient SQL server. And the back-up was also configured not to touch the filer if it was full.

Around this time, Bill learnt that his predecessor had given two days notice after a seven-year stint. Which might have been why the server room was a rat's nest and he spent his days on site “firefighting from one issue to another”.

Last week came the “best” mess of them all.

“A certain server hadn't been rebooted since well before idiot boy left,” Bill explains. “After all the updates, I decided I had a spare hour so would reboot it... and then the trouble began. Before I rebooted, it complained about disk space and the good old Windows disk space optimiser appeared claiming to be able to claw back three gig in 'un-needed' files.”

Bill trusted Windows and left it to do the job. He then rebooted and... nothing happened.

“The server came up OK but there was no logon box,” Bill says. After “checking the other boxes, it looked like most services had come online and after some digging I found why... the gina.dll had been borked as all the other Windows Server 2003 servers had the same data and time for their versions, this one had them set for the day idiot boy left”.

“As this was the server handling the back-up I decided to play it safe and see if I could restore it in some way to a back-up,” a tactic that sadly didn't work. “In the end, at 23:30 I ended up copying the needed files and the winsxs folders from a very similar box and then using the winpe bootdisk to dump them onto the relevant machine.”

Fortunately, “the machine booted up and server services returned to normal. There is now a sticker on the front saying not to power it off until migration work is completed”.

Bill now wishes to commit violence against his predecessor.

Over the years I've worked with some characters, but this idiot boy really needs to be shown how to use machines and I really REALLY feel for his current employer as they don't know what they are in for when he decides he's had enough and wants to go to another job like he did at that office.

If I ever come across this guy at a contract job I am simply going to punch him square in the face and walk off. I don't care if he makes Shrek look tiny, professional standards and morals should have kicked in before he did what he did!

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